a turn, sits resting on the pavement to the right.
For this piece, Wall photographed the sidewalk
and people in the distance first and then photo-
graphed the foreground action in the studio. The
results were then blended together. It is an ima-
gined event that appears to be based on reality
because it looks so completely real. It is a postmo-
dern allegory that Wall has described as a ‘‘philo-
sophical comedy’’:
In my fantasy, The Stumbling Block helps people
change. He is there so that ambivalent people can
express their ambivalence by interrupting themselves
in their habitual activities. He is an employee of the
city, as you can tell from the badges on his uniform.
There are many Stumbling Blocks deployed on the
streets of the city, wherever surveys have shown the
need for one. He is passive, gentle, and indifferent: this
was my image of the perfect ‘‘bureaucrat of therapy.’’
(de Duve 1996, 21–22)
In spite of the wide range of special effects made
possible through new technology, Wall continues
to produce photographs in which the completely
impossible seems altogether realistic and reason-
able, such as inDead Troops Talk (A Vision after
an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol Near Moquor,
Afghanistan, Winter 1986)(1992). This photograph
is one of his most complex, with a large group of
players in full makeup that provides the gruesome
embellishments of their mortal injuries:
Wall and his crew constructed the barren hill in the
studio, then shot each group of soldiers separately, later
combining them into one picture through digitalization.
This total control brings the picture fully into the realm of
painting and film making, two disciplines in which the
artist is more or less completely in control of the image.
The scene Wall presents here not only recalls thegrandes
machinesof artists such as The ́odore Ge ́ricault, it also
alludes to the overtly grotesque and uncanny in art his-
tory, to Bosch, Gru ̈newald, and Goya, and also to George
Romero, Dario Argento, and Hammer horror films.
(Brougher 1997, 39)
The image draws on the full range of Wall’s pre-
occupations—art history, film, and the seductive
powers of advertising campaigns such as those
recently produced by Benetton.Dead Troops Talk
illustrates the horrors of war while at the same time
fictionalizing this experience. In spite of the fact that
the photograph borrows the conventions of classical
history painting, in Wall’s world, suffering is not
sacred and unifying, it is pointless and ridiculous.
While undoubtedly Wall is best known for his
large format color work, his investigations in black
and white have enabled him to confront the legacy
of the documentary form in photography. In 1996,
Wall produced a series of photographs of menial
workers, seen working in a hotel room or mopping
the floors in a lobby. These solitary figures do not
engage directly with the viewer. Always fundamen-
tally rooted in his strong theoretical and art histor-
ical background, there are undeniable traces of the
documentary projects of photographers such as
Robert Frank and Walker Evans in these images.
Still monumental in scale and staged, photographs
such asThe Volunteer(1996) andCitizen(1996)
have a distinctly quieter, and almost introspective
quality than the color tableaux vivants. Likewise in
this period, Wall resumed his explorations of the
landscape and nature, and produced beautifully
rendered photographic studies such asA Sunflower
(1995) and views of the city of his birth and the
surrounding areas.
Wall has exhibited exhaustively in Canada and
internationally since 1969, and has had multiple
solo shows every year for the past 20 years. Like-
wise, he has been invited to participate in almost all
of the principal contemporary art exhibitions of the
past two decades, including the Whitney Biennial
in 1995,Documenta Xin Kassel in 1997, the Sa ̃o
Paulo Biennial in 1998, the Carnegie International
in 1998, and the Sydney Biennial in 2000. His
photographs are highly sought after, and are held
in private collections and public collections, includ-
ing the Tate Gallery, London; the National Gallery
of Canada; the De Pont Foundation for Contem-
porary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands; the Carnegie
Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Muse ́e national d’Art
Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the
Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland; and the Van-
couver Art Gallery.
Following a two year sabbatical, Wall resigned
in 1999 from the University of British Columbia to
devote himself to the demands of his ever increas-
ing exhibition schedule and to the production of his
own work. In 2000, Wall was invited to take a
senior position at the Kunstacademie in Dussel-
dorf, Germany, a prestigious honor awarded in
the past to artists such as Josef Beuys, Gerhard
Richter, and Bernd and Hilla Becher.
JohannaK. Mizgala
Seealso:Conceptual Photography; Constructed Rea-
lity; Photography in Canada; Photographic ‘‘Truth’’;
PostmodernismBiography
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, 1946. Earned a B.A.
Honours from the Department of Fine Arts at the Uni-WALL, JEFF